[To Betza: for example, Adrian King I think took a 6 or 9 year sabbatical and returned recently. Hopefully Betza is still occasionally looking in and may reappear say the way Aronson does once a year; or I believe Jeremy Good commented once recent months. A shot in the dark: to novices Betza abruptly stopped commenting summer 2003.] This is one of a dozen avenues to Betza's systematic development of new pieces to order. It is better approach than ''what about this?'' and ''what about that?'' The hundreds and hundreds of Armies out of Augmented Chess include not all short-range pieces. Also, A.C. is a place to start for Betza's practically forgotten and not extremely useful notation. The trouble with Betza notation (in full) is that it has to be relearned each go-around, not being that automatically intuitive, and so becomes mostly affectation in reference. You end up putting movement diagrams in words anyway to go along with notation, for your personal expression at CV art never to be played. Ralph estimates the power density of each alternate array here as up about 1/3 over standard, the particular methodology of Augmenting. Elsewhere and more frequently Betza weakens instead.

Ralph Betza claims up to 560 possible armies players can choose from these Augmenters, ''large enough to prevent players from spending their lives memorizing opening lines.'' One Augmented Bishop of 4 recommended for example is (Bishop + Wazir). One Augmented Rook of 4 recommended for example is (Rook + Ferz). [So, this Augmented Chess includes one of its configurations having the same array as recent Gary Gifford 'Latrunculi' Preset] RBetza's full idea here is to augment each of the back-rank pairs and to replace the Queen at option with Fibnif or Marshall. The difference of Augmented Chess with Betza's other Chess Different Armies is that the latter has a dozen or two Armies tested for more or less equal strength with standard FIDE RNBQKBNR. Here Ralph estimates that the power density of each alternative array emerging is up about 1/3 over that standard. Roughly, as in each of the other cases, from the enhanced Rook alternatives, RF and RA and RfbN and RffNsbN are all about equal value. Presenting so many choices with no special singling out is why Augmented Chess is not so widespread as CDA. Key Augmenters seldom used by name, Fibnif, Crab, Narrow Half-Knight, in fact all appear also in some of the CDA's forces; however, none of these Augmented arrays to choose of course can be the same as any CDA team.

I recently finished a PBeM game of this variant with Tony Quintanilla
(which I won't post due to embarassing turn 18 mate by a RNA
supported by a BD <g>), and found this a very exciting game.
<p>
As we all know, a Pawn is only as strong as the hand that holds it,
and Tony usually beats me at games that fairly closely resemble usual
Chess. But I found this game particularly interesting as I was sure
I had picked a stronger team than his:
<blockquote>
<DL>
<DT><B>White (PBA)</B></DT>
<DD><B>Queen</B>: RfbNFA</DD>
<DD><B>Rook</B>: RfbN</DD>
<DD><B>Bishop</B>: BW</DD>
<DD><B>Knight</B>: NF</DD>
</DL>
<p>
<DL>
<DT><B>Black (TQ)</B></DT>
<DD><B>Queen</B>: RNA</DD>
<DD><B>Rook</B>: RF</DD>
<DD><B>Bishop</B>: BD</DD>
<DD><B>Knight</B>: NW</DD>
</DL>
</blockquote>
Now Tony's Knight is color-changing, and his Bishop is color-bound,
but with all of that power on the board, it didn't seem to matter.
I suspose if the game had lasted longer and we had gotten down to
fewer pieces, it might. As it was, it felt like playing in a
minefield (which, IMHO opinion, is a <u>good</u> thing).

This is very nice, but I find myself wondering about the army
selection process. I can see several possibilities:
<ul>
<li>
Each player writes down their section secretly, and the selections
are simultaneously revealed;
</li>
<li>
White makes their selections, announces them to black, then black
selects;
</li>
<li>
White makes one of their choices, then black chooses a piece, then
white, etc. until both players have chosen their Queen, Rook, Bishop
and Knight;
</li>
<li>
White selects their Queen, then black selects a Queen,
then white selects their Rook, then black selects a Rook,
then white selects their Bishop, then black selects a Bishop,
then white selects their Knight, then black selects a Knight;
</li>
<li>
Like about, but in order Knight, Bishop, Rook, Queen.
</li>
</ul>
Clearly all of the above would work reasonably well, but is there a
prefered way to select the armies?